Today is the first ever World Backup Day, a day intended to encourage everyone with a computer to make sure their data is backed up and safeguarded against loss.

As computers and technology become more a part of both our work and personal lives, it becomes increasingly more important to secure and backup the data stored on those devices. A recent study showed that only 15% of computer users back up regularly. Don’t run the risk of losing your entire digital life to a hard drive crash or other tragedy. BACK UP!!

I recommend and follow a 2-tier backup strategy consisting of both a local and online/offsite backup solution.

1. Local Backup

Create a local backup on an external hard drive at your home or office. I have an external drive that I plug in once a week on Sunday and use SuperDuper! to make a duplicate copy of my laptop’s hard drive. If you are on a mac, I highly recommend using SuperDuper! or something similar to make a complete back up of your drive rather than just backing up selective files or folders. The advantage in this is that Apple computers allow you to boot from usb & firewire external hard drives. All you have to do is plug it in, and you’ll see your desktop from the last time you backed up. I’ll describe the importance of this later when I share my own stories.

2. Offsite Backup

So you’ve got your computer’s entire hard drive backed up locally to an external drive in your house. While this is an excellent start and you’re already ahead of probably 90% of everyone else out there, a local backup is still susceptile to theft, floods, fires, and other natural disasters and tragedies. If your house were to burn down with both your laptop and backup drive, you’d be out of luck. It’s for this reason I also recommend an offiste backup where your files are stored either online or on a physical hard drive in another location (for example at work or a friend’s house). Read the rest of this entry »